Mr Turnbull also thinks his predecessor Tony Abbott and his allies, along with media outlets owned by Rupert Murdoch and right-wing "shock jocks", would have preferred Labor's Bill Shorten to be prime minister than him.

"A Liberal Party they could not control is not a Liberal Party they wanted to have," he told ABC's 7.30 on Monday.

The former leader has expressed the sentiments in an interview promoting his newly-released memoir A Bigger Picture.

After bringing Mr Abbott's prime ministership to an end in a coup 2015, Mr Turnbull lost the job himself in 2018 leadership spill and was replaced by Scott Morrison.

He said he probably hadn't understood the extent of tribalism within the Liberal Party and how it contributed to his downfall at the time, accusing right-wing MPs of taking the party's liberalism.

But he insisted he had needed to trust people from the party's various arms in order to get things done.

"The truth is that when I was prime minister, everybody told me not to trust everybody else. There was virtually nobody that I wasn't been warned against," he said.

Mr Turnbull said he had been late to realise that Peter Dutton was seriously contemplating running for the leadership, in a bid that paved the way for Scott Morrison's rise.

"It was such an absurd proposition ... I didn't imagine that he was so deluded as to imagine that our political prospects would be advanced by a change of leadership, and especially to him," he said.

"And it never occurred to me, frankly, that so many people would support him. If Dutton had become leader, not even (former Labor leader) Bill Shorten could have lost the election."

Mr Turnbull said he had stood aside when Mr Dutton drove a second leadership spill so Mr Morrison - a longstanding friend - could become leader instead.

"(Mr Morrison) has got his limitations as we all have, right, he is not perfect. But he is a much safer pair of hands than Peter Dutton by far and I always regarded him as my most likely successor," he said.

"Perhaps not inevitable successor, but most likely successor."

Mr Turnbull said Mr Abbott, however, had been a dangerous leader.

"He basically abandoned cabinet government ... his whole style of government was erratic and flaky from a national security point of view."

He accused Mr Abbott of ramping up rhetoric aimed at drumming up animosity against people of the Islamic faith, at a time when terrorism was the nation's biggest domestic security issue.

"That made Australia less safe. It was profoundly dangerous."

Mr Abbott's chief of staff Peta Credlin has also been essentially "running the country", Mr Turnbull believes.

"It was as though she felt, 'I've created you, you're my creation', and she felt she owned him. It was a bizarre - a truly bizarre - relationship."

Mr Turnbull has also accused wealthy media figures of contributing to his downfall in a bid for power.

"The one thing those plutocrats knew, the billionaire media proprietor knew, is that I did not belong to them," he said.

"When you boil it down ... I think this was ultimately about power. They wanted to have again a prime minister who they felt they had some control over, they had an ownership of."

Earlier, senior cabinet ministers were sent pirated copies of Mr Turnbull's memoir, with his publisher blaming one of Scott Morrison's staff.

Nick Louw, a senior adviser to the prime minister, has reportedly apologised for circulating the copies ahead of its public release on Monday.

Australian Associated Press